pi-stream

A small streaming proxy for pi in RPC mode. It launches pi --mode rpc, sends a single prompt over its JSON-RPC stdin, and renders the event stream from pi's stdout as styled terminal output:

• thinking tokens in dim italic

• assistant text plain

• tool execution rendered as a box with live, line-by-line streamed output:

  ┌─ ⚡ bash ─ seq 1 5 | while read i; do echo line $i; sleep 0.3; done
  │ line 1
  │ line 2
  │ line 3
  │ line 4
  │ line 5
  └─ ✓ bash (1.6s, 5 lines)
  

  The top-corner header opens when the tool starts, each new line of the tool's stdout streams in with a │ gutter as soon as pi emits it, and the bottom corner closes with a green ✓ (success) or red ✗ (error), the elapsed time, and the line count. Full output is preserved — nothing is truncated.

Requirements

• A working pi binary on $PATH (pi-stream spawns it as a subprocess)

Install

One-liner — Linux and macOS, detects OS/arch automatically, installs to ~/.local/bin:

curl -sSfL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/crazy-goat/pi-stream/main/install.sh | sh

Custom install directory:

curl -sSfL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/crazy-goat/pi-stream/main/install.sh | INSTALL_DIR=/usr/local/bin sh

From source (requires Go 1.23+):

make install        # builds and copies pi-stream to ~/.local/bin

Usage

pi-stream [flags] <prompt>

Flags

Flag	Default	Description
--model	(auto)	Model name forwarded to pi (e.g. "GLM 5.1").
--thinking	high	Thinking level: off, minimal, low, medium, high, xhigh.
-t	(none)	Comma-separated tool allowlist (e.g. bash,read).
--session	(none)	pi session file path; share between invocations to carry context over.
--version		Print version and exit.

Examples

# Quick one-shot prompt
pi-stream --model "GLM 5.1" --thinking off "tell me a one-line joke"

# Let the model use bash
pi-stream --model "GLM 5.1" -t bash "list files in this repo and summarize"

# Reuse a session across multiple calls
pi-stream --session /tmp/sess "first message"
pi-stream --session /tmp/sess "follow-up that should remember the first"

Exit codes

Code	Meaning
0	Normal completion (agent_end received)
1	pi reported an error, or startup failed
2	Invalid CLI flags / missing prompt
130	Interrupted by SIGINT or SIGTERM (Ctrl+C)

Development

make build        # compile
make test         # go test -race ./...
make lint         # golangci-lint run
make tidy         # go mod tidy + diff check

Layout:

main.go                  # thin entrypoint — signal handling + os.Exit
internal/event/          # typed structs for pi's JSON-RPC event stream
internal/render/         # state-machine Renderer: styles events as ANSI output
internal/pi/             # subprocess lifecycle (Start, Events, Close)
internal/cli/            # flag parsing + event-loop orchestration

License

MIT